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The first thing that Keith was aware of when he woke up was Lance’s voice. That was a nightmare in and of itself.
The second thing that Keith was aware of was the fact that his body hurt in various places. Not in a good way like when he woke up sore the day after a vigorous training session, but in an uncomfortable way like when he woke up after he had been thrashed around the Red Lion for a bit too long in the midst of battle. His neck felt stiff and he felt weary to his very bones and his skin felt too tight and the entirety of his body felt too heavy to lift. He didn’t even want to think about lifting it for at least three minutes.
The third thing that Keith was aware of wasn’t just a singular thing, but two things that came to him at once. For one, he was definitely lying on the floor. For another, there was a low hum of concern in the background, but he could barely hear it over Lance’s voice.
The fourth thing that Keith was aware of was that Lance was saying illogical and nonsensical things. For instance, Lance went from saying, “Man that flying monkey is going fast,” to “Dios mio I’m falling,” to “Well hello, pretty lady,” to “Mm, clouds are so soft, I want to sleep here forever.”
It was akin to the fleeting glimpses of Lance’s consciousness that Keith caught wind of whenever the entire team would meditate together with the headbands. Kind of like they had been doing before Keith had fallen asleep.
Everything clicked into place a few moments after that.
Keith lurched upwards with a gasp, almost smacking his forehead against Pidge’s. He definitely didn’t yell aloud, mouth opening and closing silently, but he was probably mentally shouting if the way that Lance abruptly shot upright and said, “WHY ARE YOU YELLING?” whilst thinking it. Keith’s head spun as he heard it twice, slightly disjointed, and the strange non-echo was quickly followed by, “Man, it feels like I went four rounds with Keith in hand to hand, what the hell?”
Except Lance didn’t say that last thing. He thought it.
“No one’s yelling, Lance,” Shiro said reasonably.
“Except for you,” Hunk said with a shrug and a teasing sort of grin.
“Keith literally just woke me up by shrieking,” Lance said at the same time that he thought I’m definitely not going crazy, Shiro, c’mon. Take my side for once! Keith’s headache was getting worse. By the way Lance’s face twisted, he sympathized, but then he looked at Keith and turned white as a ghost. “Okay, why can I hear things you’re saying when you’re not moving your mouth?”
Keith turned his gaze sharply to Coran, feeling his mouth thin. “Why can I hear Lance’s thoughts in my head?”
“What?!” Lance exclaimed aloud and internally and Keith was sorely tempted to just knock the guy out again. Lance’s stream of conscious while he was asleep was weird, but at least it wasn’t this agonizing for his own head.
“You can hear his thoughts?” Coran said, brows furrowing. “Are you certain that you can hear his thoughts?”
“Wait, wait,” Lance said before Keith could open his mouth, “so that Keith voice I can hear in my head when he’s not talking is Keith thinking?”
“Well I definitely haven’t had the time to master ventriloquism recently,” Keith said, voice dry and cutting and he squinted at Lance, a little bit. Lance made an offended squawking noise, wrinkling his nose back at Keith in return.
“That could be a side effect of what just happened,” Pidge said, voice taking on a familiar academic tone. “You guys, presumably, passed out because your headbands suddenly sparked and seemed to short out in the middle of a team meditation. We can all see glimpses of what each other is thinking, though it tends to just be on the surface, but if something happened to your headbands, there may have been an accidental connection forged.”
If Lance’s thoughts had been going seventy miles per minute, before, they were going light speed when Pidge finished talking. Keith reached up and pressed his fingers against his temples, closing his eyes tight and trying to calm his own thoughts. That, however, just caused Lance’s to get even louder. Somehow.
“That is logical,” Conan said slowly, looking between himself and Lance.
“Get him out of my head,” Keith said shortly, arms crossing. He wanted to stand up, but his body still felt too heavy for him to dare.
“Hey, you said that we bonded!” Lance said, loudly and he thought, even louder, I bet my brain’s a great place to be. “I thought we had been making progress!”
“You think too loudly,” Keith knew that his voice was close to a growl, probably a little too close, but he could feel his frustration mounting, “so, no, your brain’s not a great place to be. Whatever bond we have, that doesn’t mean I want you to be able to know exactly what I’m thinking, and I’m sure that you don’t want me to know your every last thought, either.”
Wait, can I get deeper into Keith’s thoughts? Lance thought and before Keith could tell him to stop, he felt a peculiar and almost painful sensation at the base of his skull. As if there was something pulling at his brain sharply while at the same time prodding just a little too deeply. His vision went blurred at the edges, the fuzziness quickly taking over, while the nausea that he was feeling sharpened.
Sheer terror consumed him for a moment and he shoved against the feeling as hard as he could.
Mental shoving was strange.
“Stop that!” Keith shouted as he hauled himself upwards and he stumbled, feeling numb. “Don’t pry into my head,” the world was lurching and it was only because he was fueled by anger and inklings of fear that he started to make his way to the door, pushing past Pidge and aggressively shrugging off Shiro’s grip on his shoulder.
He only got a few steps out the door before searing pain sliced through his mind and he collapsed like a marionette with their strings cut. His head was throbbing in time with his racing heart and he was only dimly aware of people shouting behind him and more aware of the way that Lance was absolutely wailing inside of his head.
It was kind of hard to ignore.
“Keith,” said a voice that sounded like Shiro’s, which cut through his thoughts but struggled midway. As if it had gotten caught in an enormous web and had to scream to make itself heard. Keith could barely turn his head to look up at Shiro, the simple motion almost causing him to vomit. A hand grabbed at his arm and he let himself be tugged up, slinging his arm over Shiro’s shoulders and letting the man half walk and half drag him back into the room.
Lance was lying on the ground in a semi-fetal position clutching his head with Hunk and Pidge next to him. Keith refused to feel bad about it.
“It appears as if your connection is rather, uh, physical,” Coran said, twisting his mustache. “I didn’t know that Altean technology malfunctioning this way could result in something like this happening. Fascinating, truly.”
“Fascinating?” Lance exclaimed, still thinking far too loudly. “Keith just tried to kill me!”
“I didn’t know that was going to happen,” Keith said uselessly, and he ducked his head down when he heard how pained he sounded. He remembered why he was trying to leave a moment later and his head snapped back up and he glared, “You were the one who was trying to look at stuff that isn’t any of your business.”
“I was just curious,” Lance said defensively, returning Keith’s glare balefully.
“Alright, guys, let’s calm down,” Shiro said, ever the mediator. Keith normally appreciated that about the man, but he was too angry to really think of it in a positive light. “Coran, Pidge, do either of you have any idea on how to fix this?”
“I’m not exactly well versed in neuroscience,” Pidge said, head tilting, “then again, this is probably way outside the bounds of human research insofar as the mind is concerned. Maybe we could take apart the headbands to figure out what went wrong and reverse engineer from there? I’ve got no idea how long that would take, though.”
“Certainly, between Pidge and myself, we should be able to find some sort of fix to this situation,” Coran said, hands clapping together once and a determined smile on his face.
“Maybe you guys will stop fighting so much each other after this,” Hunk said with a laugh that was an edge too nervous.
Keith purposefully thought about how annoying Lance’s thoughts were and how unlikely that was.
The offended way that Lance shouted made him feel a little better.
“It’s more like they’re probably going to kill each other. Or Keith is going to kill Lance,” Pidge said with a wry smile.
He almost smiled when Lance made an even more affronted noise and started to argue with Pidge. Which was like trying to argue with a wall, sort of. Then he remembered how much his head hurt and how pissed he was and smiling wasn’t quite an option, anymore.
——
When they told Allura about their special situation, so to speak, the princess looked between the two of them a grand total of five times. Then, she looked at the rest of the team and Coran before she smiled and bit her lip to try to suppress her smile and Keith got the sinking suspicion that Allura was trying very, very hard to choke back some laughter.
They told her about the pain they experienced when they weren’t in the same room, after that, and she expressed genuine concern thereafter.
Unsurprisingly, the first thing that Lance thought upon seeing Allura was Pretty lady at least a dozen times. What Keith didn’t quite expect was the way that the chant dissolved into Lance having vague thoughts about whether or not Allura could be considered a queen instead of a princess, and then shifted to the fact that she would have been a good ruler, had the entirety of her people hadn’t been. You know. Slaughtered. Also, did the Altean monarchy even work like that?
Keith agreed distantly and saw Lance look at him in shock out of the corner of his eye. He amended his agreement by thinking that he would have phrased it more considerately since the Altean race being nearly wiped out should have been treated more delicately.
He heard Lance huff and would have smiled if his head wasn’t still absolutely pounding. It seemed like it was getting a little better, though.
“Wait,” Hunk said as they were all walking towards the room that Keith and Lance would be staying in temporarily. “Is this going to effect the whole forming Voltron thing? ‘Cause if Keith and Lance can’t not be in the same room, how can they possibly get into their lions?”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Lance said with wondrous misery, his face falling comically.
“Shocking,” Keith said dryly, because he couldn’t resist.
“Shut up, Keith,” Lance said, though there wasn’t much heat behind it.
Worry flitted across Allura’s expression before it smoothed into benevolent calm. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” she said with finite confidence. Keith could appreciate her collected approach to this situation, but he wasn’t really sure if it was going to be all that easy.
Lance agreed. Keith nonverbally demanded that Lance stop listening to his thoughts, to which Lance flung his arms out and gestured widely, saying, “I can’t exactly stop listening to your thoughts, okay? They just keep popping into my head!”
Shiro looked between the two of them and sighed, a little bit. “I agree with Allura. We can test the usability of the Lions with you two like this tomorrow, but for the time being I’d prefer to see both of you guys resting, alright?”
“Alright,” Keith said while Lance grunted a not-quite-response and shoved his hands into his pockets. Keith could feel Lance’s sullen irritation digging into his own head and he had to restrain himself from punching Lance out of frustration.
The room that they got had bunk beds, to which Lance loudly, verbally and nonverbally, claimed the top bunk the moment he took notice of their sleeping situation. Keith sighed and conceded because he didn’t care whatsoever and everyone dined together a little bit after that. Pidge and Hunk walked with them back to their temporary room after dinner, though it was more like they walked with Lance, if he were being honest. Keith didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation, after all.
Then they were left alone.
The abrupt silence would have been stifling if it weren’t for the fact that it wasn’t actually all that stifling. Sure, the room was quiet, because neither of them were talking as they puttered about the room, but that didn’t mean that it was actually quiet.
There was absolutely no chance for quiet. Not with Lance’s thoughts being so goddamn loud all the time. Not only that, but they were frantic and disorganized and constantly moving from topic to topic, as if he couldn’t just settle on one thing to think about for more than a minute. The similarity between the pace of Lance’s thoughts when he was awake and when he was asleep was strange, but at least when Lance was awake the thoughts actually made some sort of sense.
That didn’t make them any less annoying to deal with.
They tested how far apart they could be without consciously testing it. Which meant that Lance had to use the restroom but both of their heads started screaming at the distance between the beds and the other side of the room. Keith lingered outside of the bathroom and carefully didn’t plan Lance’s murder.
Lance still shouted, “Stop fantasizing about killing me, that’s creepy as hell, man,” through the door.
Keith, unlike Lance, was making a conscious effort not to actually pay attention to what Lance was thinking. Listening to his exact thoughts felt like too much of an invasion of privacy, ergo Keith avoiding it to the best of his ability. He wasn’t able to block out Lance completely, but his thoughts steadily became indistinct. Vaguer and not quite solid, like trying to grasp at smoke. He could feel the way that Lance’s thoughts stuttered and jumped, though.
The anger that he had felt earlier over Lance prodding at his brain had subsided somewhat, by and large because Keith was too drained to even try to keep it up. He didn’t really hate Lance, after all, and had moved past the phase where he didn’t think of Lance was anyone significant a while ago. Being tasked to save the universe side by side did that to you.
However, he still felt a little residual irritation when Lance had approached him when they were winding down for the night. Keith was sitting on his bunk pulling off his gloves when Lance said, “Hey, uh, about earlier,” before stopping abruptly.
“What, Lance?” Keith said shortly, looking up at Lance as he tossed the gloves onto a nearby table.
“I’m,” Lance began and then his face twisted and he was making broad gestures with his hands. Keith hadn’t really noticed how physical Lance was with his words, before. “I’m sorry, okay? I know I shouldn’t have done it because that kinda stuff has to be personal, but I wasn’t thinking, so I did it anyways.”
Keith considered Lance for a few moments, taking in the way that his shoulders were lower than they usually were and the stricken look on his face. He wasn’t listening for Lance’s thoughts, but he could feel his regret. It was strange. “Just don’t do it again,” Keith said, because he wasn’t well versed in forgiveness.
“Yeah, course,” Lance said with notable discomfort, and then continued, because Lance had a tendency to ramble, “not like I’d want to pry into your brain again, anyways, cause, like, two seconds after I did it felt like I was being bodily shoved except in my brain and that really, really hurt. Also, it’s weirdly dark in there and felt very, very cold and unwelcoming.”
“Goodnight, Lance,” Keith said, even though he wasn’t tired. He laid down, anyways, because he didn’t want to deal with the conversation, even though his head hurt a little bit less.
Lance complained for a few minutes about Keith ignoring him before he waved the lights off and then climbed into his bunk. Keith had no idea why he decided to go about things in that order, since Lance ended up stubbing his toe and exclaiming about it in the dark, but he didn’t make a comment. By the time Lance settled down, the throb of his head localized to the back of his head, where he had felt that strange pulling/prodding sensation from earlier.
Sadly, the headache started to spread again as Keith remained awake and had to feel the strangeness of Lance’s sleeping conscious. A few visceral things slipped through, too.
He didn’t want to know why Lance was dreaming about spaghetti chasing him.
——
No, the test with their Lions did not go well.
Don’t ask.
——
Lance had a big family. Everyone knew that. Everyone had to know that, because Lance spoke fondly of his little siblings and big siblings and mom and dad and grandma and uncles and aunts and cousins when he got the chance. Occasionally, he even enjoyed regaling everyone with the great adventures that he and his younger siblings and cousins went on, even though they were all primarily imaginary. He had told the harrowing tale of how he and his little sisters once saved his little brother from the clutches of the great blanket monster more than once.
So when Lance, while they were both getting ready a few days later in their temporary room, hesitantly said, “Does it, mm, bother you when I think about my family?” Keith had to turn and stare.
It took a few moments for the question to really process, and Lance was looking both nervous and cagey, which was weird in and of itself, and Keith couldn’t help but squint a little bit. “Uh. No? I haven’t really listened to your thoughts since the first day, anyways. I’ve only gotten vague ideas of what you’re thinking and feeling.”
For a moment, he imagined that the warm happiness intermingled with quiet sadness that he sometimes got from Lance was because he was thinking of his family. That wouldn’t surprise him. It felt like sweet melancholia.
“Wait, how are you not listening to my thoughts?” Lance said, voice pitching high with the question, before he shook his head. His lips were pursed, a little bit, and his hands were on his hips. He was probably getting an answer from Keith’s own thoughts, anyways. “No, anyways, are you, uh, sure? ‘Cause I can try to stop thinking about them so much if it bothers you.”
“Why would you thinking about your family bother me?” Keith said with genuine confusion, before it clicked with him a few moments later. He could tell the moment that Lance noticed that Keith realized, because Lance colored a little bit at his cheeks.
Lance was trying to be considerate, because Keith didn’t have a family.
Keith struggled to wrap his mind around that for a second. He wondered, for a moment, what Lance had found when he pried, before he decided that he was better off not knowing. A memory, maybe, or a resonating pang of loneliness.
Yeah, Keith didn’t want to know.
“I didn’t know before the other day, okay?” Lance said, sounding flustered and practically pouting at the wall next to Keith’s head. “That —— that you were an orphan. No one ever really talked about that, at the Garrison, so I didn’t know.”
“No, you just weren’t listening,” Keith said, because he knew that people talked about it every now and then. Idle minds and idle mouths craved gossip, after all. Lance looked insulted, again, and Keith pressed onward before Lance could get a word in, since he could hear his thoughts getting louder and more riotous. “You thinking about your family doesn’t bother me, and you talking about your family doesn’t bother me, either. Just because I don’t have anyone to miss back on Earth doesn’t mean that you have to stop missing people who are important to you.”
Lance’s face flickered through a book of emotions from confusion to guilt to wariness to wistfulness before it settled on something that Keith figured was thankfulness, though he wasn’t entirely sure. The fact that he could feel the relief that Lance felt spoke volumes, though. “I’m glad. I wasn’t really sure if I could stop thinking about them, anyways, but I wanted to make sure. I just really, really miss them, you know?”
There was a beat that Keith let stretch, because sometimes he liked messing with Lance.
“I mean, you obviously don’t know,” Lance was scrambling and Keith covered his mouth with a hand, because he could feel his mouth curling. “Since you don’t have a family and all —— which, that sounds really insensitive, dios mio, I should just stop talking, shouldn’t I?”
“Come on,” Keith said, taking pity on Lance as he stood up. “I want to get some training in after breakfast, since my head doesn’t hurt as much as it did yesterday.”
He turned to walk away and heard Lance scrambling behind him.
It didn’t occur to him until halfway through breakfast that he had been halfway down the hall by the time that Lance had gotten out of the room. The day before, that sort of distance would have caused a horrifying amount of pain for both of them.
A theory started to form in his mind.
——
Keith’s head was pounding again. It was the same damn day.
“Come on, Keith, I want to spend time with Hunk and Pidge,” Lance was whining. Loudly. Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. The annoyance was pressing against Keith’s skull from all angles, and he could barely resist wanting to throttle the man. “Coran, even, I don’t care anymore. You can’t possibly want to spend your entire day here in the training room completely alone, can you?”
He focused his attention and adjusted his grip on his Bayard. He cut down the robot he was facing down with movements that felt jagged and harsh before he said, “End training,” in a clearly annoyed voice. The robot disappeared and he wiped the sweat from his forehead, before fixing Lance with an expression that could curdle milk. “Do you ever stop complaining?”
Everything had been fine through breakfast and the first part of training. Lance had even trained with him for a little bit. They went through a few exercises together, before Lance let Keith do his own thing. Of course, that quickly devolved into Lance being bored.
“I know that you’re not normally around us when we’re not eating,” Lance said from where he was sitting on the ground, legs sprawled in front of him, “but I didn’t think that you spent all of your time alone. Seriously, is this what you do all day when we have downtime?”
“It’s important to hone your skills,” Keith said, refusing to feel defensive about this.
“Alone?” Lance said, incredulous. “Is this how you spent your time back at the Garrison, too?”
Keith thought back on his time as a cadet and regretted it immediately at the realization that dawned upon Lance’s face, clear as the rising sun. For all that Lance had claimed that they had a rivalry, he didn’t know much about Keith back before he had been kicked out of the Garrison. Apparently, his piloting skills and the fact that he was a dropout was all that mattered to Lance.
Some strange part of Keith was glad for that. He ignored that part of him.
“So that’s why you respect Shiro so much?” Lance looked surprised and a little put off.
“He was the only person who didn’t just exist in my periphery,” Keith said aloud, because Lance would have heard it, anyways. Saying it somehow felt less condemning than just thinking it did, though he didn’t know why. “But to answer your question clearly: yes, this is how I spent my time back at the Garrison. Why do you think that I can beat you so easily?” He was being mean, and he knew it.
Lance’s hackles were raising and his thoughts turned more barbed against Keith’s mind, which just served to irritate him more. “No wonder your thoughts feel so empty, you have no clue how to form anything meaningful, not even ideas!”
Keith scoffed, hands clenching around his Bayard. The pain in his head was mounting and it was almost as bad as the first day. “My thoughts are like that because I don’t want you peeking through my head. Meaning, I’m making them like that on purpose.”
“You don’t need to spell it out for me like I’m brainless,” Lance said loudly, pushing himself up so that he was standing, hands shoving into his pockets as he strode close to Keith, the desire to fight written all over his posture. “I can’t believe that you were my rival when you were just a loner with too much free time on your hands and no friends.”
“That’s your imagined rivalry, not mine,” Keith said dismissively, frowning at Lance hard before pushing past him and walking towards the door. “Come on, I need to talk to Pidge about something.”
He had to pause because the pain was getting sharper the further away that he got and continued when he heard Lance scrambling after him. He strode down the halls with long steps and ignored Lance’s loud questions. When the found Pidge, Hunk, and Coran, the three were already staring at them. Probably heard them coming, thanks to Lance.
“The better that Lance and I are getting along, the further apart we can get,” Keith said without further ado. “Earlier today I could be half a hallway away from Lance, but right now we can barely be a yard or two apart.”
Pidge was the first to recover, naturally, “Your logic does make sense.”
“So, our ability to form Voltron is hinging entirely on the chance of you two not fighting?” Hunk said, looking apprehensive.
“In short: yes,” Keith said.
“Well then,” Coran said primly, “we’re rather doomed until we can fix this, aren’t we?”
——
Within the next week, they got into at least a dozen verbal fights and no less than five physical confrontations. Half of them, or more, were over Keith’s frustration over Lance listening to his thoughts and responding to them aloud thoughtlessly.
His frustration was understandable, okay?
For one, they were personal. For another, Lance tended to respond to his thoughts when they were around the others.
Suddenly saying, “Yes, Keith, your hair is stupid and you should cut it,” when Allura was trying to review something important was inappropriate on all levels. No matter what.
——
It was a relief when Keith’s head stopped hurting enough that he could train. That morning was good, all things considered. He accepted Lance’s offer of a water bottle with a nod of thanks when it was time for a break, even. Lance was rambling on about something or other, aloud and mentally, and Keith wasn’t entirely sure what it was. His lack of attention could be considered rude if it were anyone but Lance, he suspected, but Lance just had a tendency to talk, sometimes. Without stopping. He talked to talk, and Keith was pretty sure that Lance just talked extra around him because Keith himself tended towards silence.
In the past few days, Keith had learned more about Lance than he necessarily wanted to. Nothing necessarily bad, just little things like the fact that Lance had no idea that his dreams were so bizarre, craved a normal burger so badly that it made Keith crave one, too, and that his “first love” had been his older brother’s best friend. Her name was Henrietta, they called her Henri.
Also, Keith learned that Lance’s older brother and Henri were engaged. Furthermore, Lance was going to be the best man at their wedding. Lance had gotten a little sullen, after that thought, and Keith had suggested that they go for a ride in the Blue Lion.
That was one of the few things out in the middle of space that made Lance feel a little better.
Keith had gotten better at generally blocking any of Lance’s clear thoughts from getting through to him, but some of them were so prominent and loud and abrupt that he couldn’t quite avoid them.
For instance, in the midst of Lance saying something or other about the ocean, he suddenly thought Man, I really hope that I’m referring to Pidge properly, because I’m still a little confused. Does that make me a bad friend? It does, right? What kind of friend sometimes thinks of their friend as a he when Pidge said that she was a girl and, dios mio, I’m a terrible person, aren’t I? My sister would kick my ass——
A part of Keith found Lance’s concern a little touching, but he was so incredulous over the fact that Lance was internalizing his worry instead of just talking to Pidge directly that he had to stop and squint at Lance with the water bottle pressed against his mouth.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” Lance interrupted the story that he was telling and sounded a little too insulted and mostly a lot worried.
Keith wasn’t sure if Lance had been making a conscious effort to not listen to his thoughts or if Keith had just dulled how much he thought well enough. It occurred to him, after a moment, that a potential reason behind Lance’s inability to stop talking was because he was trying to avoid reading Keith’s mind.
“Here’s a concept for you: why don’t you ask Pidge personally, instead of uselessly worrying about it?” Keith said with deliberate slowness.
Lance’s mouth opened and closed a few times, making him look like a fish, before he abruptly turned around and started to walk away. Keith sighed loudly and took a few more gulps of water, in part wanting to test how far apart they could get from each other, and followed when he felt pain prickling. Lance was almost all the way down the hall, when he stepped out of the training room.
Keith took that as an allowance to linger outside of direct hearing range while Lance talked to Pidge. He could still feel the press of Lance’s thoughts and feelings, and it all shifted from nervous to confused to relieved to happiness within the span of a few minutes. When the conversation seemed like it was over, Lance poked his head out of the room and pestered Keith to come inside and stop being such a loner.
He rolled his eyes, but walked into the room anyways.
——
The fact that they both woke the other up due to having a nightmare more than once was something they didn’t talk about.
They both just stared above them until they fell back asleep.
No need to talk about it. The way there was no need to talk about the abstract and fuzzy way that Keith thought about his parents, sometimes. The way there was no need to talk about the fears that abruptly popped into Lance’s mind out of absolutely nowhere, sometimes even resulting in Keith being shaken in the aftermath.
So, they didn’t talk about it.
——
They were getting better, but it still wasn’t enough for them to be operating their Lions independently. Not by a long shot. So when Zarkon decided to attack, it wasn’t surprising when Shiro made the call for both of them to stay in the control room with Allura and Coran.
That didn’t make it any less frustrating, though.
Lance’s distress and disappointment grated against Keith’s head, which just made the frustration worse. The pain in the back of his head was getting worse, again, which was ridiculous.
“Stop that,” Keith snapped as he watched the Yellow Lion crash into the side of the monster, barely knocking it off balance, “you’re pissing me off.”
“Stop what? Worrying about our friends?” Lance said disbelievingly, shooting Keith a look that was judgmental by Lance’s standards. “Well I’m sorry for worrying about them, but maybe you should be worrying about them more? Or are you too emotionally constipated to care?”
Allura was glancing over at them, but she was too busy dealing with watching the flow of the battle to chastise them.
“Of course I’m worried,” Keith said, voice raising and browed furrowing. “There’s nothing we can do, though, because we’re apparently incapable of getting along.”
“Well, maybe if you could learn to trust me,” Lance lurched forward, shoving a finger into Keith’s chest, “we wouldn’t be in this problem.
“Well, maybe if you would stop seeing yourself inferior to me,” Keith said automatically, and a little mean spiritedly, as he batted Lance’s hand away from him, “we’d be able to fight alongside everyone else.”
A sudden and stilted silence took form between the two of them. Keith was aware of Coran and Allura shooting them concerned glances, but focused on Lance, instead. Lance’s face was twisting strangely, and Keith knew that he was scowling, because there was the root of the problem. Or, at least, a major portion of the problem. After three weeks of living in each other’s heads and sharing a room, Keith knew that they were both aware of it, at least on some level.
There was hurt rolling off of Lance, but the pain didn’t increase. It didn’t decrease, either.
“We’re equals, Lance,” Keith said, finally. It occurred to him that they could have had this conversation mentally, if they had wished, but they had both been stepping around actively listening to the other’s thoughts that the idea seemed strange. Impossible, even. Unreal, at worst. The way that his throat closed around the words he knew he had to say and the way that his voice sounded tired but determined and the way that his jaw was tensing —— that was real.
“You sure about that?” Lance said with no small amount of bitterness, a frown pulling at his mouth almost petulantly. “You seem to enjoy lording your level of skill over me.”
“That’s not me lording my skills over you,” Keith said, because it may have been at first, but it wasn’t. Not anymore. “We’re teammates, aren’t we? I may not be good with the whole being around people thing, but I know that means we have to work together. We do work together. Sometimes we even work together well. So, yeah, I think of us as equals.”
Lance stared at him for a few moments before he said, “Why don’t you trust me?”
“I don’t trust anyone,” Keith said automatically.
“That’s not true.”
“I don’t trust many people,” Keith barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes, because that would undermine exactly what they were trying to get at, here. “I’m sure you’ve figured that out.”
“Yeah, I have,” Lance said, leaning away from Keith a little bit and crossing his arms. “But I’ve proven myself pretty trustworthy, haven’t I? I’ve been trying my hardest not to read your thoughts, which, I gotta say, is really, really hard. Stupidly hard. But I tried, and I’ve watched your back since all of this insanity started happening, because we’re a team. That means that you should trust me now, right?”
“It’s not that easy,” he said, because it wasn’t.
“It’s not easy to not feel inferior to you, either,” Lance pointed out. “You have to learn how to trust me, though.”
Keith felt discomfort crawling across his skin, and he knew that it was his own discomfort. He and Lance weren’t not friends, but they weren’t quite friends, either. That was how he existed with all of the members of the Voltron team. The only person that he trusted on any level was Shiro, and while he knew that the others would watch his back, but that wasn’t trust. It was necessity.
It was something else entirely to trust someone with his mind.
The fact that he had built up a rapport, a camaraderie, with them was already shocking in and of itself. It was circumstantial, however, because it wasn’t like he could actually be on the same team as them and not form some sort of relationship at some point.
Yet he had been holding them all at arm’s length, and he knew it. Maybe he had bent his arms a little bit, but he hadn’t given up much ground. Keith wasn’t sure if he knew how to give up ground.
He thought about their teammates, fighting against Zarkon’s latest monster, and thought about how much they were struggling. Keith swallowed, slowly, and met Lance’s eyes again, unsure when he had actually looked away. “I’ll try, okay? I’ll try to trust you.”
Lance nodded, once, and held out his hand. Keith took it after a moment of inherent hesitation and their hands clasped together hard, and they stood up as one. They both immediately ran for the door, ignoring the way that Allura and Coran had shouted after them, and when they went their separate ways to get to their lions, there was no excess pain.
The pounding at the back of his head had dulled. It wasn’t gone, not completely, because things like trust and unlearning how to look at someone weren’t easy. They weren’t easy by a long shot. But they had met halfway, and that had to be enough, for the time being.
When they got out there, Pidge and Hunk cheered while Shiro praised them.
Suffice to say, that monster didn’t exist for much longer.
——
When Pidge and Coran finally unlinked their minds, it was an overwhelming relief. For the first few minutes, Keith was stricken by how utterly quiet his mind was, without the constant thrum of Lance’s thoughts pressing against him, but he became accustomed to it quickly.
Well, he wished he could say that.
In the hours after being unlinked from Lance, everything felt too quiet. He was hyper aware of every last noise that the castle made around him when he tried to train and had to give up after an hour because his attention was listing. There was no other choice but to wander aimlessly, after that, trying to stretch back into being the only person inhabiting his mind.
He came across the others eventually, as he wont to do. There was a moment of stuttering hesitation that blanketed him from head to toe, before he stepped closer to them.
Everything felt less quiet, that way.
It quickly became a necessity to settle back into his mind when they had to go save a planet from Galra’s clutches the day after. Really, the mission seemed simple enough, except for the fact that Galra had set up posts among the planet’s almost constant mountains, the valleys in between too narrow to properly fit their Lions, and they didn’t know where precious resources were. Or civilians.
They split up and Keith ended up with Lance. Naturally.
At first, he was too concentrated on the battle to really notice it. The only reason he really, honestly noticed it was because he had glanced at the blue blur out of the corner of his eye, and the realization crashed onto him quickly after that.
The way that they were moving in sync was a little hard to miss, after all.
Lance’s fighting skills weren’t quite refined, however, and when he didn’t notice a Galra soldier coming at him from his blind spot, Keith immediately darted forwards, running his Bayard sword straight through it, tossing it off to the side as he went. Behind him, Lance finished shooting the last two Galra soldiers, before there was abrupt silence.
When he glanced at Lance, they were both breathing a little hard, though the rise and fall of Lance’s chest was clearly more pronounced. The fact that they had lived with a mental connection for more than a month meant that it wasn’t really a surprising that they had developed some sort of synchronicity between them. What did surprise Keith was that he didn’t mind.
It was a slow and gradual process, but one day he would trust Lance.
For the time being, he said, “You okay?”
Lance nodded once and grinned, “Yeah.”
They carried on together, side by side.